Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You Read Online Free Page B

girl.
    This was before Morgan Carmichael had become so successful. Before he’d begun being away so many nights. Sometimes weekends. Traveling—on business.
    Because Merissa was not a baby now. She was thin—(thank God!)—meaning that you could see her ribs through her pale skin, and you could feel the vertebrae of her spine if you touched her spine—(which Merissa would not allow, if she could avoid it)—but she was definitely female: breasts, curly little hairs sprouting in her armpits, at her crotch, and on her legs.
    And tall: too tall. For there were boys who were scarcely Merissa’s height, who would never ask her out for that reason. Even with Merissa slouching—just a bit—there was no disguising this fact.
    Last time Merissa’s height was measured, she was five feet seven and a half inches tall. Her weight was 104 pounds.
    That hadn’t been for a while, though—now Merissa could not be examined for fear of the little wounds and scabs being discovered.
    Don’t touch! My body is my own secret.
    She’d learned from Tink: Don’t let the Enemy near.
    Only friends—who have “proven themselves loyal”—can come near. But even friends shouldn’t be entrusted with some secrets—
    A secret can be too toxic to expose to a friend.
    So, no one had known what Tink was planning.
    That way, no one could stop her. No one could scream, scream, scream at her, Goddamn you, Tink, we love you!
    No one could betray her by telling Big Moms. Better yet, one of Tink’s teachers at school.
    It was obvious that what Tink had done to herself had been planned with care. Everything that Tink did, her creative efforts particularly, was planned with care and very little left to chance.
    The fact was: Tink had been pronounced d**d—(Merissa could not think, still less say aloud, this terrible word)—on her seventeenth birthday, which had been June 11, 2011.
    Pronounced d**d on a morning when her mother, Veronica Traumer, “Big Moms,” was thousands of miles away in Los Angeles.
    Pronounced d**d at the Quaker Heights Medical Center to which she’d been rushed by ambulance, having been discovered, in her bed, not breathing and unresponsive, by Mrs. Traumer’s housekeeper.
    â€œStop! Just stop.”
    Merissa spoke aloud, frightened.
    â€œDon’t think of Tink now .”
    It was just too sad to think of Tink. And it was just too frustrating to think of Tink. And you couldn’t, frankly, think of Tink—if you’d been Tink’s friend—without being very angry with her.
    Merissa’s father had not ever liked Tink. Though he hadn’t said anything really negative or critical, you could tell—the way a man can smile sneering at the mention of a girl’s or a woman’s name so you know he isn’t impressed.
    Not even pretty. What kind of “TV actress” could that homely red-haired girl have been?
    To her shame, Merissa had laughed with Daddy. As if what Daddy said, like some cruel, crude remark tossed out by a sneering guy, was funny.
    You want them to like you—love you. You laugh at their jokes that aren’t funny; you smile when they break your heart.
    For it was certainly true, Merissa’s father did not like her to cry .
    Merissa’s father did not like her to be “emotional.”
    Years ago when Merissa had been little, of course she’d cried—fretted, fussed, threw little red-faced tantrums—but only when her mother was close by.
    If she’d dared to act up when her father was close by, he would make a cutting remark and walk out of the room.
    Mom had joked, when Merissa was an infant, that any hint of nursing , diapers , diaper changing had been enough to make Daddy uncomfortable.
    And Daddy had not ever liked the infant smell —baby formula, soaked diapers, baby talcum powder.
    Who’s Daddy’s little button-nose? Daddy used to tease when